“What kind of democracy are they talking about? Democracy should involve the participation of the people.”

“We will not be silent! They will not silence us!”

CAWN (the UK based Central American Women’s Network) highlights the fact that, as usual, media coverage of the continuing crisis in Honduras omits both consideration of the impact of Micheletti’s military coup on women and the role of women in protesting against it. In fact, women have been in the forefront of the protest.

“As the threat of a coup loomed, women’s organisations sprang into action, organising marches, mobilising rural and urban women, writing and distributing bulletins, and sending information and eyewitness images around the world by email, blogs and social networking media. Since the mainstream news channels in Honduras are strictly controlled, these reports from women continue to provide crucial information by their immediacy and by giving a voice to ordinary people,” says Katherine Ronderas in a press recent release.

Long answer: No, it isn’t, douchebag. It isn’t, it never has been and it never will be. Why? Because people have died, and continue to die because of it. Needlessly and horrifically. Racism is never funny, like sexism and ablism and ageism are never funny, like homophobia and transphobia and xenophobia are never funny, like any other form of discrimination that I’ve missed are never funny, because people have died.

An Indian man, Gregory Fernandes, was killed in a racist attack in 2007. His attackers pleaded guilty to manslaughter in February this year.

A 62 year-old disabled woman, Jennifer Macaree, was left to die in her car after she was stabbed repeatedly. This was just two weeks ago.

A transwoman, Robyn Browne, was murdered in 1997 , while she was working as a prostitute. Her alleged murderer, James Hopkins, is pleading not guilty.

Michael Causer, a gay teenager, was battered to death in July last year. James O’Connor has pleaded guilty to his murder.

And that is such a tiny sample of the people that discrimination has targeted. Those people were all in the UK, and I have only used stories that appeared this year. I haven’t even begun to touch on the stories of people who have been attacked for not being white-able-heterosexual-males that survived. I haven’t even begun to talk about rape. I haven’t begun to talk about all of the people in other countries who have been targeted for being seen as “deviant”. I haven’t – because I can’t – talked about those people who have been killed, or attacked, or harrassed, whose stories haven’t made it into the news.

So many people have been hurt over the years, so many lives have been destroyed. So many of these victims will go unnoticed, unnamed, because this is so common. Because they’re not interesting enough to the mainstream (white-able-heterosexual-male) media. It happens to them because they are who they are. And then their experiences are not recognised, because they are who they are.